Lead Developer

Langham Recruitment; Stretford; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A fast-growing EdTech firm in Stretford is seeking a Lead Developer to spearhead its engineering team across web and Unity technologies. This pivotal role involves hands-on coding, system architecture, and mentoring while leading a multidisciplinary team. You will play a critical part in the company's growth, ensuring the creation of robust, scalable platforms and integrations with AI-enabled services. The position offers a total package of £100,000 to £112,000, including EMI shares and flexible working conditions.

Benefits

EMI Share Scheme

Flexible working hours

Collaborative company culture

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading or mentoring a software development team.
• Strong hands-on experience as a full-stack developer with React.js and JavaScript.
• Solid working knowledge of C#, guiding Unity-based development teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary engineering team across web and Unity technologies.
• Own and evolve the platform's system architecture for scalability and performance.
• Set best practices through code reviews and mentoring.

Skills

Team leadership

Full-stack development

React.js and JavaScript

C# guidance

AI integration

Cloud systems

Code reviews

Communication skills

Job description

Lead Developer | EdTech / SaaS | Hybrid (Manchester) | £70,000 - £80,000 + EMI Shares (circa 100k total package)

A fast-growing EdTech / SaaS company is looking for a Lead Developer to lead and help scale its engineering function across web and immersive technologies.

The business builds interactive, technology-driven learning platforms that bridge the gap between theoretical and practical education. As the company continues to scale across the UK and US, this role will be critical in shaping the technical architecture, delivery capability and long-term engineering strategy.

This is a senior role for a hands-on Lead Developer / Development Lead who enjoys balancing active development work with team leadership. You'll take ownership of system architecture, code quality and delivery, while managing and developing a multidisciplinary team of web and Unity developers.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead, manage and develop a multidisciplinary engineering team of 6+ across web and immersive (Unity) technologies.
• Balance hands-on development with leadership responsibilities, contributing directly to web-based projects while overseeing broader technical delivery.
• Own and evolve the platform's system architecture, ensuring scalability, performance, maintainability and security as the product and team grow.
• Set and uphold engineering best practices through code reviews, technical standards and mentoring across JavaScript and C# stacks.
• Work closely with a Project Manager to plan capacity, estimate work, prioritise delivery and ensure projects are delivered on time and to a high standard.
• Provide technical oversight and architectural guidance for Unity-based development, supporting best practices in C# even if not coding daily.
• Design and support AI-enabled integrations, working with external APIs and scalable integration patterns to enable current and future platform features.
• Ensure development workflows, tooling and deployment processes are efficient, reliable and well documented.
• Maintain oversight of cloud infrastructure, environments and data flows, ensuring systems are robust, secure and well managed.
• Identify technical risks, architectural gaps and delivery bottlenecks early, proposing pragmatic solutions.
• Support hiring and onboarding of new developers, working with senior leadership to identify skills or capacity gaps.
• Communicate technical decisions, architectural direction and delivery progress clearly to senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• Help define the long-term evolution of the engineering function, including future team structures and leadership layers.

Requirements

• Proven experience leading / mentoring a software development team
• Strong hands-on experience as a full-stack developer, with react.js and javascript experience
• Solid working knowledge of C#, with the ability to guide and support Unity-based development teams from a leadership perspective.
• Experience designing and integrating AI-enabled services using external APIs and modern integration patterns.
• Comfortable working across cloud-based systems, APIs, data flows and JSON-driven architectures.
• Experience running code reviews, mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards across a team.
• Strong delivery mindset, with experience collaborating closely with project or product management.
• Confident communicator, able to explain technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Pragmatic, organised and proactive, with the ability to foresee technical risks and guide teams through growth and change.
• Willing to remain hands-on while the team scales, with a clear interest in growing into a larger leadership role over time.

Benefits

• circa £80,000 base | £100,000-£112,000 total package
• EMI Share Scheme
• Hybrid working: Monday and Friday from home, Tuesday-Thursday in Manchester.
• Flexible working hours (7.5-hour day, 08:00-09:00 start).
• 23 days holiday plus bank holidays (holiday can be negotiated)
• Collaborative, inclusive and ambitious company culture